


Memorandum

by Argyle



Category: The Liar - Stephen Fry
Genre: Blowjobs, Death Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-20
Updated: 2005-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 23:58:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memorandum

The first of May was not at all a bad day on which to die.

When one gave the idea any sort of serious consideration, one might see that old William and Dorothy had perhaps not toppled so very far from the mantle of sanity when they splendored in the grass and imagined themselves of the late. Lonely clouds and daffodils were well and good, but Adrian knew that it took a certain _joie de vivre_ to enjoy the hereafter.

Also: the hereafter ought not to involve government appointments or postage stamps.

It required the viewing of no small number of German films for Adrian to realize that drizzly funerals were generally underrated, not least of all because it allowed certain mourners the opportunity to explain away their sniffling noses and red-rimmed eyes with a simple evocation of the chill. Even so, something of the old idealist had remained within him as he took his last breath. The arsenic-laced glass had fallen from his hand and met the cold clutch of the hearth in a shower of white light, but today the air was crisp and clear, and the sky an unblemished blue that could only have been so fully rendered after years of practice.

As far as grand send-offs go, Adrian thought, it was not wholly lacking in the area of style. He was determined to make the most of it.

A choir called after dewdrops and soft petals in the autumn moonlight of the early century without murdering the time, and sweet, precious Hugo looked so well in his despair. Adrian would have liked to have kissed his perfect mouth, and dusted the tears from his eyes, but alas, Adrian was no more. He was a memory, a reflection on the rough sea, an apparition. He was a sigh lost on the wind. Ex post facto. Deceased. He had traded his blood and guts and gore for starlight wings and silk pyjamas; the fat lady had sung.

Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet; there might be a rose in your hair like the Andalusian girls used, and yes, Adrian saw himself lying upon a bed of crimson like gentle Adonais, his head bound with overblown pansies.

Hugo held white lilies; his veins were full of whisky. He had prepared a speech.

Adrian saw his mother and father, Jenny, Uncle David, Gary, Mr. Biffen and Lady Helen, and Christly Christ: Trefusis read a paragraph on doomed youth. The poor devil, they said, the poor dear. How could we have known? How might it have been otherwise?

And how his mother wept, her hand trembling as she raised a handkerchief to her darkly veiled eye. Adrian thought it rather gauche of her to carry on so, but he could not help but be touched by the depth of her sorrow. It almost made up for the fact that she had selected the wooden coffin rather than the one of sleek obsidian and sterling knobs; he yet fancied himself a bounder in the classical sense, all wide smiles and wider lapels, but there was something distinctly strange about seeing the rouge on his cheeks and the violets in his cold dead hands.

The lilies fell into the open grave like a shower of white stones.

A nightingale began to sing.

Dusk settled on the earth, and all was still.

“What do you think?” Adrian asked breathlessly, settling back against the headboard.

Hugo plucked an errant pubic hair from the tip of his tongue. “I think it needs rehearsal.”

“What if one stuck one’s head--”

“No.”

“You didn’t even let me finish what I was going to say. It is very vulgar to interrupt a post-coital confession, my dear.”

“I _knew_ what you were going to say.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did,” Hugo said, his tone maddeningly self-satisfied.

“You knew I was going to say, ‘What if one stuck one’s head into a gas-oven’?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“It’s been done.”

“Oh.” Adrian sighed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Of course you’re right.” It was dreadfully difficult to concentrate on the matter at hand, what with Hugo’s earnest blue eyes staring back at him, Hugo’s lovely flushed cheeks and gently parted lips, Hugo’s wrists and fingertips as they fumbled with Adrian’s buttons and-- “Struck down by a lorry?”

Hugo looked up. “Not very romantic, is it?”

“Do you suppose it matters?”

“Do you?”

“I can’t think of a time when it wouldn’t,” Adrian admitted, and Hugo slid a hand against his bare chest. “But what if it were a commentary on the fearful sterilization of post-war society? The struggle between man and machine, the search for one’s true place amidst the contradictions of soot and sewers and chartered accountants. Mass extinction. The military-industrial complex. Fountains playing in St. James’ Park to the sound of fife and drum. That sort of thing. Anyway, one must put up with a bit of disorganization, don’t you think... or don’t you?”

“Mm,” Hugo said against Adrian’s clavicle.

“Perhaps there might be room for a smackeral of Dadaism, but with fewer skulls? Sweet on the outside, poison on the inside... rather like-- Oh, that’s very nice,” he breathed, drawing his hands through Hugo’s hair. “Darling Hugo, would you really miss me if I died?”

“What?”

“Don’t say what, dearest, say pardon.”

Hugo’s mouth was poised above Adrian’s ear as he spoke: “You don’t actually mean to try any of those things, do you?”

“Why? Would it displease you? Would it put your heart in a twain? Would you write hundreds of short swallow-flights of song about me over the course of twenty years?” Adrian reached for Hugo’s cock, looking him straight in the eye. Hugo was laughing. “Really, we have been over this _so_ many times. If you don’t stop going on in this manner I shall be forced to ravish you again.”

Hugo went on.

Twenty-eight minutes later, Adrian said, “Necktie caught in a printing press?”


End file.
